Song-I Han

Song-I Han
Professor
Joint Appt: Chemical Engineering

Contact Phone

(805) 893-4858

Office Location

(remote) on Leave to June 2024

Specialization

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance

Dynamic Nuclear Polarization

Membrane Biophysics

Protein Structure-Dynamics-Function

Solvation Science

Surface Chemistry Characterization 

Education

Dr. Han received her Doctoral Degree in Natural Sciences (Dr.rer.nat) from Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany, in 2001. She pursued her postdoctoral studies at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany sponsored by the Max-Planck Fellowship and the University of California Berkeley sponsored by the Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Dr. Han joined the faculty at UCSB in 2004, received tenure in 2010 and was promoted to full professor in 2012. She is a recipient of the 2004 Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, the 2007 NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award, the 2008 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the 2010 Dreyfus-Teacher Scholar Award, the prestigious 2011 NIH Innovator Award and the 2015 Bessel Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 

Research

Research Group Website: http://www.chem.ucsb.edu/hangroup/

Research Objective:

Her group’s research pushes the frontiers of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy for the study of materials, macromolecular complexes and biological interactions. The particular emphasis is on the interrogation of interfaces and local structures through locally amplified NMR spectroscopy, of materials and biological systems. The study of local features at the nanometer and sub nanometer scale is achieved through the use of strategic or intrinsic electron spin probes and by employing orders of magnitudes of signal enhancements, achieved through polarization transfer from the electron spin probes to the surrounding nuclear spins, which process is termed dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP). Dr. Han is internationally known in particular for her pioneering efforts in developing the Overhauser DNP relaxometry technique for probing local surface water dynamics at biomolecular surfaces in solution state by selective signal enhancement scheme of translationally diffusing water at picoseconds to sub-nanoseconds time-scales and within sub-nanometer length scales near spin labeled sites of interest. 

Publications